Her extravagance brought general ridicule upon Quimby and herself. "P. P. Quimby compared to Jesus Christ?" exclaimed the Portland Advertiser, in commenting on her letter, "What next?" Mrs. Patterson again took up the cudgels. She wrote in the Portland Courier:
Noticing a paragraph in the Advertiser, commenting upon some sentences of mine clipped from the Courier, relative to the science of P. P. Quimby, concluding, "What next?" we would reply in due deference to the courtesy with which they define their position. P. P. Quimby stands upon the plane of wisdom with his truth. Christ healed the sick, but not by jugglery or with drugs. As the former speaks as never man before spake, and heals as never man healed since Christ, is he not identified with truth? And is not this the Christ which is in him? We know that in wisdom is life, "and the life was the light of man." P. P. Quimby rolls away the stone from the sepulchre of error, and health is the resurrection. But we also know that "light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not."
Mrs. Patterson expressed her admiration of Quimby in verse also:
SONNET
Suggested by Reading the Remarkable Cure of Captain J. W. Deering
To Dr. P. P. Quimby
| 'Mid light of science sits the sage profound, |
| Awing with classics and his starry lore, |
| Climbing to Venus, chasing Saturn round, |
| Turning his mystic pages o'er and o'er, |
| Till, from empyrean space, his wearied sight |
| Turns to the oasis on which to gaze, |
| More bright than glitters on the brow of night |
| The self-taught man walking in wisdom's ways. |
| Then paused the captive gaze with peace entwined, |
| And sight was satisfied with thee to dwell; |
| But not in classics could the book-worm find |
| That law of excellence whence came the spell |
| Potent o'er all, the captive to unbind, |
| To heal the sick and faint, the halt and blind. |
| Mary M. Patterson. |
For the Courier.
